Yes there is a difference between animals and humans. Even the fact that we split ourselves into these two groups shows that. There is one difference that I keep coming back to almost no matter the end. It has something to do with the scientific name for our species, Homo Sapiens - Humans, the Wise. That's right we decided from the beginning that we were the only intelligent species on the face of the planet. But past that there is another thing that this brings up. What is wisdom? If we alone have it, how does that make us different to every other species on this earth?
It has been defined as the ability to know what to do with knowledge and while this is true, I would like to propose an addendum to this. It's also the ability to synthesise information, which leads me to the point that I wanted to make. The difference between humans and animals is that instinct doesn't rule us.
This is a fairly easy thing to see. If an animal is hungry it will find something to eat, no matter what it was doing immediately before that. If a human is hungry and was doing something, that will finish first. We set priorities that can override our own survival requirements temporarily. No animal will go on a hunger strike. But it also has some deeper consequences.
A human can protect others over themselves.
A human can fight and kill other humans for little or no reason (ie with out the need for protection or to satisfy a need for survival).
But also a human can literally put a value on a life - it isn't just something to fill in time with or a collection of health-some proteins.
And so this is what I come back to, this is my reason for doing a lot of things. Instinct would tell me to do all sorts of stuff that would get me into trouble - instinct is bad for me. Doesn't mean that I shouldn't eat when I'm hungry, but when instinct tells me to be angry or what ever, then I should ignore it and try to find something new. This is why I dislike painkillers - the instinct is to try and prevent or relieve pain. Pain is a teaching method that the body uses to try and keep us safe, relief of this stops the lesson. It also limits the things that we can do as part of anything (and you know how much I hate limitations). They work by slowing the nerve receptors in the brain and therefore slowing the brain. If the brain is what separates us from animals, why would we want that?
The other thing that this difference means is that animals sharing human rights, at least to me, makes no sense. I would argue that if they are to get human or human like rights, they have to first be able to argue for them on their own.
It has been defined as the ability to know what to do with knowledge and while this is true, I would like to propose an addendum to this. It's also the ability to synthesise information, which leads me to the point that I wanted to make. The difference between humans and animals is that instinct doesn't rule us.
This is a fairly easy thing to see. If an animal is hungry it will find something to eat, no matter what it was doing immediately before that. If a human is hungry and was doing something, that will finish first. We set priorities that can override our own survival requirements temporarily. No animal will go on a hunger strike. But it also has some deeper consequences.
A human can protect others over themselves.
A human can fight and kill other humans for little or no reason (ie with out the need for protection or to satisfy a need for survival).
But also a human can literally put a value on a life - it isn't just something to fill in time with or a collection of health-some proteins.
And so this is what I come back to, this is my reason for doing a lot of things. Instinct would tell me to do all sorts of stuff that would get me into trouble - instinct is bad for me. Doesn't mean that I shouldn't eat when I'm hungry, but when instinct tells me to be angry or what ever, then I should ignore it and try to find something new. This is why I dislike painkillers - the instinct is to try and prevent or relieve pain. Pain is a teaching method that the body uses to try and keep us safe, relief of this stops the lesson. It also limits the things that we can do as part of anything (and you know how much I hate limitations). They work by slowing the nerve receptors in the brain and therefore slowing the brain. If the brain is what separates us from animals, why would we want that?
The other thing that this difference means is that animals sharing human rights, at least to me, makes no sense. I would argue that if they are to get human or human like rights, they have to first be able to argue for them on their own.
I've been getting a lot of input from you lately and I thought it was high-time I returned the favor.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting how you talked about pain and numbing it but didn't mention how we humans can ignore pain to do something regardless of how much damage it does to us. Animals endure some amount of pain and retreat. My sisters' cat will get a swift flick in the nose for serious misbehavior and he immediately stops what he was doing. He doesn't decide that he likes what he was doing enough to endure the pain, but humans can. Perhaps this was meant to be included in the part about sacrificing our lives for others?
We can decide to push our bodies beyond their normal capacities to save lives, to save ourselves, or even just build muscle. How often do you see chimps doing push-ups to build their arm muscles?
I definitely think your strongest example is that we humans can place significance on another person and their life rather than our own. The fact that someone would sacrifice their life for someone they don't even know is something I've never heard of in the animal kingdom. Never, not even close comparisons. We know mother animals will defend their young, but how many mother chimps would die to save young opossums? None. We've heard of interspecies caring for young, but not defending and dying for the same.
Keep writing,
De Facto
Yeah, I didn't mention the ignoring of pain because the direction that I tend to start taking there is a direction that no one actually wants to hear me go in.
ReplyDeleteInteresting follow on from your past point. It implies that some instincts are stronger than others, ie, maternal instinct can in some cases override the predatorial instinct but only to a point.